A Modern Myth
by eliska
Summary: He watched from the window, perplexed. What's he doing on my lawn? Drabble.


_Maybe one day the flowers would hear you._

--

It was snowing.

He wondered what he was going to do today, as school had been canceled; Mr. Mackey had just phoned his parents to notify them of the change in schedule. His backpack was lying on his desk, half-open, with several textbooks scattered about. And he was actually looking forward to school, too, because they were supposed to be doing presentations today. He had really liked the model he had made.

It wasn't as if he had anything better to do.

Butters hopped out of bed, still rubbing his eyes and half-dressed. He could hear his parents moving around downstairs; his mom was probably making breakfast. It was cold, but not so cold as to completely overwhelm him; South Park was like this most of the time, and he still couldn't fathom why they would cancel school today.

Something was moving on his lawn. He could see, barely, someone's head bobbing up and down on the white world outside. The blonde boy crept onto the windowsill, looking backwards in case one of his parents should intrude on his privacy.

Someone _was_ indeed there, and for a moment Butters thought it might be someone from school—Stan, maybe, or even a girl, although he could not for the life of him figure out why anyone would be outside his house at eight in the morning—and he leaned forward, almost pressing his nose against the windowpane. He could not recognize the person, as he—or she—was dressed completely in an assortment of thick sweaters and scarves. There was no inch of skin exposed to the sharp cold outside, and that made guessing all the harder.

Butters stared at the figure for a long time, mesmerized by its movements. It looked like it was digging a hole right smack in the middle of his lawn.

_Maybe I oughta tell dad_, he thought, then changed his mind almost immediately afterwards. This seemed like an interesting thing to watch, although _why_ it was interesting seemed almost completely an obscurity that did not surface into the young blonde's mind at all. It felt like a better way to spend his morning, though he was sure his dad's yells for him to go down and eat breakfast would soon reach his ears.

Suddenly the person stopped doing whatever he was doing in the first place and looked up, alert. Butters narrowed his eyes and stared even harder. If he was not mistaken, the figure was…staring right back at him. _Oh, jeepers! What if it's a-a crazy stalker or somethin'?_

Alarmed, the blonde abruptly pulled his face from the window. Had he been spotted? He felt sort of ashamed, as if someone had pulled off his curtains while he was in a shower. The house was still, silent—he could not hear anything moving, and suddenly wondered if he was the only person left in the world.

A desire to go outside suddenly overcame him; Butters went to his door and listened, hearing the distant sound of the front door closing. His parents had gone out, to the supermarket perhaps, even though they had no business doing that on a weekday. So far today had been very strange, but he supposed there was reason in everything.

The blonde silently opened the door, silently crept down the stairs, and silently stood at the foot of the stairs wondering why he was doing everything silently when there was nobody at all in the house with him.

And then he promptly forgot about it and went to the front door cheerfully, even forgetting that he had not yet had breakfast. This was Butters, after all. Nobody else could act in such a jolly, naïve manner.

He peeked out the peephole and saw that the figure was still there. Whoever it was, the person was _still_ standing in the middle of his lawn, staring at the hole in the ground. Butters wondered if he had buried something there, or had done some otherwise unspeakable thing. It was in broad daylight, after all; anything could happen in South Park, and anything inevitably did.

_I oughta open the door_, he thought. _I oughta t-tell him to get off my lawn._

The blonde was then struck by a sudden thought: had his parents seen the person? They would most certainly have seen the hole in the ground even if the person had hidden, and it made absolutely no sense inside his head. _Maybe the hole had been covered up_. It seemed silly that he was so fixated on the issue of a person out on his lawn and a hole in the ground, but there wasn't anything to get fixated about. He supposed that this would do for the day.

Butters opened the door and stuck his head out.

The figure looked up, startled, and stared at the curious blonde boy through his many layers of clothing. Butters thought, as he gazed back at the figure, that he looked pretty familiar. Then again most people he knew had the same kind of body shape, so that point was pretty much moot. There was _something_, though…

A scarf fluttered in the sudden surge of wind, revealing several locks of dirty-blonde hair. Butters squinted._ Now that,_ he thought, _is mighty strange. I don't think I know ah-anyone with that kinda hair. Or maybe I just c-can't remember. Oh, hamburgers, what am I gonna do?_

He walked over to the figure, not knowing what to say. The person just stood there, as if transfixed by something. Perplexed, the blonde wondered if something was on his face—dried toothpaste, maybe. He raised a hand to wipe at the imaginary specks of paste at his lips, and then stopped. It probably looked really weird to whoever the person was.

"Hey," he managed uncertainly. The figure only cocked his head and continued to stare at him in a way that made Butters edgy. "Who are ya? I…I don't think I've ah, seen you around here. Mind telling me w-why you're digging a hole in my lawn?"

"I don't go to school around here," the person in the multiple layers of clothing said. "Thought you knew that. I wanted to get your attention. Dunno if this was going to work; I was going to throw stones, but I couldn't find any. All buried under the dirt. Hid when your parents came out, and they didn't spot the hole, God bless."

_Oh_, Butters' mind quite literally jumped, surprised. It all sort of made sense now. "I thought you were—"

"It's okay."

"You changed." It was not a question. Butters really had to look very hard to tell—there were just too many layers of clothes—if not for the hair. _That_ was still as wild as ever. "A bit, I guess."

"I'm not at that place anymore."

"I know that. Wanna come inside?" Butters pointed at the half-open door. "You look, ah, warm 'nough, but I s'pose—no harm in that. H-How come you thought of visiting me?"

"There's nobody else I could go to," he replied. "That's why I left."

And that was, Butters supposed, more or less true. He took the person—who was not the person anymore but _the person_—inside, saying something in a low voice, and closed the door slowly. The wind had died down a little, and the hole was already starting to be covered in snow. Inside, the leather-bound book was situated firmly in the ground, half-buried in the soft white flakes. The text was clear before his eyes:

"Leviticus 18:22"

Someone had crossed it out, hesitantly, with a red marker. The text was not faded, although it wasn't new-looking either, and inside the house Butters wondered what had happened out here in the cold. It seemed illogical for him to think of anything otherwise, but he only remembered the day,_ that_ day. Someone had prayed many times over for a miracle to happen, and he was going to make that happen.

The blonde closed the tome and held it close; only now had he started to notice how cold it was outside.

--

A/N: I have absolutely no idea why I wrote this. It's just something that popped up in my mind and wouldn't go away. All in all, it shouldn't be too hard to guess who the other person is...or who he was meant to be. I can't do any damned characterization so late at night. Apologies.


End file.
